One of the biggest names in online piracy is shutting down

If you’ve ever even dabbled in online piracy, there’s a good chance that you downloaded a movie that was released by the popular movie torrenting group known as YIFY. For years, the group has dominated public BitTorrent sites with its small file sizes, solid quality, and quick-to-download DVD rips. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, YIFY and its YTS website have both shut down, and they’re never coming back. 

Ten days ago the popular movie torrent site YTS stopped working. The downtime raised concern among many BitTorrent users, not least because the site belongs to movie release group YIFY, which has dominated public BitTorrent sites for several years. Today we can report that this reign has come to an end. YIFY and YTS have shutdown permanently, as predicted earlier this week. A lot of information has been made available over the past several days and multiple sources have now confirmed that YTS and YIFY will not return. The entire operation has stopped which means that no new official YIFY movie releases will appear on any torrent site, anywhere. TF has received additional explanatory details from trusted sources, but we have been asked not to reveal all of the information just yet. However, our sources confirm without doubt that the shutdown is permanent. The operator of YTS/YIFY, meanwhile, remains silent. The news marks the end of a remarkable era. YIFY first arrived on the scene in 2010 and the group has shared over 6,000 releases since. The group’s website (YTS.to) also gained popularity in recent years. Earlier this year the operator informed TF that they had close to a million unique visitors per day, generating six million pageviews.